Visit HarpWeek.com

   
 


 Liberal Republican Movement

 


 “The Modern Mazeppa”
  Cartoonist:  Thomas Nast
  Source:  Harper's Weekly
  Date:   June 1, 1872, p. 428

Click to return to previous version of this cartoon...

Click to return to previous version of this cartoon

Complete HarpWeek Explanation:
Nast's theatrical set-piece introduces candidate Greeley as "The Modern Mazeppa in "What I know About The Road From Cincinnati To-." It is a travesty of the venerable theatrical war-horse Mazeppa (or The Wild Horse of Tartary), dating from 1830 and itself based on a swashbuckling 1819 poem by Lord Byron. The play's appeal depended originally on a hair-raising final scene in which a young Polish nobleman is stripped of his clothing by a villainous count, tied to the back of a spirited stallion and the two, in tandem, gallop across the stage on an elevated runway. An 1861 production starring the seductive actress Adah Isaacs Mencken became an overnight sensation when it was offered in New York City and Albany.

Adah Mencken's version generated even more interest than usual because she played the male hero, wearing a flesh-colored body stocking which created the illusion that she was totally naked, and because the runway was extended out into the audience to further surround and engage the spectators. In the best traditions of the special effects of the day, lightning flashed, snow fell, wolves howled and vultures circled. A moving background panorama of craggy peaks and yawning gorges passed before wondering eyes. After fighting a duel with the evil count, Adah Mencken was divested of her black cloak and prepared for her unbridled ride in what has been described as the "first public striptease act ever witnessed in a theater."

An editorial in the New York Tribune, presumably penned by Greeley, took a dim view: "We cannot believe that the actress scheduled to appear before our citizenry in Mazeppa would so shock and revolt decent people by exposing her body in the nude." In Nast's cartoon, eleven years later, Greeley (like Adah Mencken) is the captive passenger, bound by a single rope, on a perilous course for the executive mansion atop the cliff in the upper-right. Although it is highly doubtful that Greeley was ever a witness to Adah Mencken's sensational performance, it is possible that an avid theatrical partisan like Nast would have seen it at the earliest opportunity. (He drew Jefferson Davis as "The Modern Mazeppa" for Phunny Phellow in June 1862.)

Greeley's Liberal Republican steed, with the "Gratz Brown" tag on its tail, is receiving a send-off (upper left) from the Cincinnati Convention leaders (l-r): Senators Reuben Fenton, Lyman Trumbull, Carl Schurz, and Thomas Tipton. The inevitable paper in Greeley's pocket is titled "What I Know About Horsemanship, H.G." The tiny figure just behind Schurz's right arm seems to represent a first attempt at sketching Whitelaw Reid, the Tribune's acting editor and major orchestrator of Greeley's nomination.

 

 

 

 
 

 

     
 

 

 
     
 

 

 
     
 

 

 

Website design © 2001-2008 HarpWeek, LLC
All Content © 1998-2008 HarpWeek, LLC
Please submit questions to webmaster@harpweek.com